Take Me Apart
Sara Sligar, 2020
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780374719593
Summary
A spellbinding novel of psychological suspense that follows a young archivist’s obsession with her subject’s mysterious death as it threatens to destroy her fragile grasp on sanity.
When the famed photographer Miranda Brand died mysteriously at the height of her career, it sent shock waves through Callinas, California.
Decades later, old wounds are reopened when her son Theo hires the ex-journalist Kate Aitken to archive his mother’s work and personal effects.
As Kate sorts through the vast maze of material and contends with the vicious rumors and shocking details of Miranda's private life, she pieces together a portrait of a vibrant artist buckling under the pressures of ambition, motherhood, and marriage.
But Kate has secrets of her own, including a growing attraction to the enigmatic Theo, and when she stumbles across Miranda's diary, her curiosity spirals into a dangerous obsession.
A seductive, twisting tale of psychological suspense, Take Me Apart draws readers into the lives of two darkly magnetic young women pinned down by secrets and lies. Sara Sligar's electrifying debut is a chilling, thought-provoking take on art, illness, and power, from a spellbinding new voice in literary suspense. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Sara Sligar is an author and academic based in Los Angeles, where she teaches English and creative writing as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Southern California. She holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Pennsylvania and a master’s in History from the University of Cambridge.
Sligar's writing has been published in McSweeney’s, Quartz, The Hairpin, and other outlets. Take Me Apart is her first novel. (From publishers.)
Book Reviews
[A] circuitous first novel…. Ms. Sligar’s debut is by turns an art-world satire, an erotic romance and a descent into madness. Its gratifying conclusion proves well worth the digressive journey.
Wall Street Journal
A dark, thoughtful thriller.
Washington Post
At the center of this dark drama is mental illness…. Reading it is painful. Yet, these are some of the novel’s strongest pages…. A reading experience like peeling an onion layer by layer…. You can put this book down, just not for long.
USA Today
A juicy thriller.
Entertainment Weekly
[P]erceptive…. Sligar shows off a keen ear for dialogue…. With a cool style and fast pace, Sligar achieves a propulsive exploration of these ambitious women’s inner turbulence in response to an abusive man in each of their lives.
Publishers Weekly
A study of two damaged and sympathetic women…. Love story, hate story, mystery—all in one.
Library Journal
Sligar handles her intricately structured story's threads with delicacy in this impressive, suspenseful debut.
Booklist
(Starred review) [V]ividly rendered…. Sligar delivers an intriguing mystery while tackling big themes, especially sexism and the societal restraints placed on women's bodies and minds. The results are spellbinding. A raw and sophisticated debut.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for TAKE ME APART ... then take off on your own:
1. What do we learn about Miranda through her diary and the other artifacts of her life that Kate Aitkin works through?
2. How—and why—do the revelations of Miranda's life affect Kate's own mental stability? What are the deeply held secrets in Kate's own life?
3. What role does Kate's Aunt Louise play in Kate's unraveling?
4. Talk about how the novel explores the way artists, especially if they are women, often suffer for their creations.
5. What does this novel reveal about the negative effects of ambition, success, and fame?
6. In what way can gossip in this novel be both corrosive as well as useful?
7. What do you think about Theo? Does your assessment of him change?
8. As you, along with Kate, continued to read through Miranda's archival material, whom did you first suspect, and did your suspicions shift from one character to another? Who and why?
9. Do you find the novel's conclusion satisfying?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)